On Mon, 2012-05-14 at 10:27 +0300, Jonathan Morton wrote:
> 
> 2) The Traverse links lead me to two types of devices - one of which
> is a router-type box which looks promising, but comes without
> documentation 

linitx.com can get the Geos although it's not listed on their web site.
And the Solos PCI card *is* listed: http://linitx.com/product/12606

> 3) The second type of device is a PCI card which appears to have the
> combination of an Ethernet NIC and a DSL modem *in series* on board. 

You want the dual-port Solos, not the older Pulsar. It is an ATM device
(well, two ATM devices), properly supported by the upstream kernel via
drivers/atm/solos-pci.c

The Geos is just one (or two) of those on a Geode motherboard.

> So I repeat my question: where can I reliably go and buy a DSL modem
> that I can put Linux on?  It probably helps to mention that I'm in
> Finland, so a European (or at least British) reseller is preferable. 

If the Geos or Solos are too expensive, I'd be looking for other ADSL
devices supported by OpenWrt. Probably Lantiq-based. The Netgear
DGN3500B perhaps (see recent traffic on openwrt-devel).

-- 
dwmw2